Mandailing-Sumatra
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The Mandailing Province of West Sumatra’s highlands has been hailed as one of the world’s premium coffee growing regions since the Dutch East Indies trading Company began their plantations in the 17th Century.
The strains of Arabica grown in this region produced such exceptional coffee, that it gave the Dutch a total monopoly on the global coffee trade for over 200 years. Prized throughout Europe this strong, black, rich, sweet coffee - Kopi Jawa Mandailing ( Jawa – Java ), was then lost to the world and thought to be extinct due the dissolution of the Dutch East Indies Trading Company, numerous local political struggles, the Leaf Rust plague of 1880’s, and eventually World War II. The plantations and the coffee trees were literally swallowed and strangled by the jungle.
Then in 1999, on the highest ridges of Mandailing Estate, one of the lost plantations was found. The ancient Arabica trees had grown to giant proportion over centuries - alive and flourishing in the jungle. Thought to be extinct – the last of their kind.
Since their rediscovery, they have been painstakingly rehabilited and now the legend of Mandailing Estate single origin Arabica Coffee has been reborn.
This famously smooth tasting gourmet Arabica was first introduced to Sumatra by Dutch spice traders in the early 1800's, then lost to the dense Jungle during World War II. Re-discovered in the remote highland Mountains of Mandailing in north western Sumatra, this plantation and its rare coffee has since been resurrected almost two hundred years later.
